Tokyo Motor Show: Settle down . . . your motoring future is in a Japanese living room on wheels

The Tokyo Motor Show reveals car design is looking east  with some pretty weird results, finds Ray Hutton

There is a car that stands up to let you in, can turn in its own length and changes colour electronically. One vehicle has a babbling brook encased like an aquarium between the seats. Another uses face-recognition computers instead of a key: if it doesn’t like the look of you it won’t let you in.

Observers are pointing to the show as proof that Japanese design is displaying a new self-confidence. Whereas cars from the Far East have traditionally been dowdy derivatives of European styles, designers are now drawing overtly on Japanese influences, from origami to Zen gardens.

Companies such as Mitsubishi are aware that the design of Japanese high-tech electricals, including mobile phones and video cameras, are lapped up in the West and are hoping to bring some of that excitement to car design. In some circles this is being termed the “J-factor”.

In fact the desire for Japanese high-tech style seems to be so prevalent that even Jeep, the most American of marques, is showing off the Treo, an “urban mobility vehicle” that looks as if it has come straight out of a computer game.

Modern Tokyo with its relentless traffic constantly poised on the edge of gridlock is clearly a big influence on Japan’s car designers. There is not much road or parking space, so on the one hand there is a trend for making cars as small as possible. On the other, if you are going to spend long periods of your drive to work in a stationary position, the car should be as near as possible to a “living room on wheels”.

In these well equipped cars communications and information systems are important and so are large airy spaces. Their designs draw on Japanese architecture and even traditional Zen gardens.

In the vanguard of the former trend is Toyota’s PM (personal mobility), a single-seater personal pod. The PM is reminiscent of a covered motorcycle but it is also a car that is “alive”, with different postures and colours and communication links with other PMs.

When the PM is parked it sits upright, taking the minimum of space. Lift the canopy and it presents the seat in a lowered position at just the right height to sit down on. Settle in between the two control arms and press a button and the seat slides up into the centre of the pod while the car itself lowers and extends itself, assuming its “city” mode.

It is all slightly reminiscent of those armchairs for the elderly which tip up to ease standing and sitting.

The car is equipped with pistol-grip controls for each hand which control steering, braking and acceleration.

PMs are intended to communicate, so that they can navigate to a rendezvous or even follow one another on autopilot in a “platoon” formation. Cars that link up and move at a set speed independent of the driver’s control have long been a suggestion of transport planners seeking to ease congestion.

The PM’s electric motor drives the rear wheels which have illuminated hubs that, like the body sides, can change colour at the driver’s whim. When communicating with another PM the colours resonate so that you can identify your friend.

The front wheels are hubless and can steer independently, while the rear wheels can turn in opposite directions, so that the car can rotate on the spot and park in the tiniest space.

It may look like a space-age dream but Toyota is serious about it as a proposal for urban transportation in 2010.

By then, soothsayers predicted a few years ago, many of our cars would be powered by fuel cells: the clean engines that make electricity by combining hydrogen fuel with oxygen from the air.

There are lots of fuel-cell vehicles at the Tokyo show but nobody is optimistic of getting the technology down to an acceptable price within a decade, and there are few signs of an infrastructure of hydrogen refuelling stations.

But the fuel cell is still the best candidate to power the car of the future and the car makers continue to reduce the size of the fuel-cell systems.

Honda and Toyota are among the leaders in this research and both are presenting concept cars that take advantage of the way the fuel-cell components can be hidden away, liberating cabin space and eliminating the need for a conventional bonnet.

Honda’s offering, called the Kiwami, is ultra low and wide, a kind of four-door Lamborghini, and houses its fuel cells and hydrogen tank in a tunnel between the seats.

The top of the tunnel is a transparent chamber through which — symbolically — flows water, the only waste product of the fuel-cell process. “The interior is based on the kind of feeling a Japanese experiences when contemplating a carefully tended garden,” says Honda.

Toyota’s fuel-cell-powered Fine-N is not unlike the General Motors Hy-wire, which has been widely demonstrated, with the technical bits under the floor, and drive-by-wire controls.

A scary aspect is its innovative entry system, which uses biometric face recognition. The doors will open only if the car detects a familiar face, and if it does the driver’s settings for the seat, controls and air-conditioning are automatically adjusted. What happens if you have a facelift or even a cosmetic makeover is unclear . . .

The essence of the Hy-wire project is a chassis platform containing all the mechanical components onto which various kinds of bodywork could be fitted. Hy-wire is an airy four-door saloon.

The second version, making its debut in Tokyo, was entrusted to Suzuki, GM’s Japanese partner, which has produced an extraordinary six-seater bus with two large sliding doors on each side and some uncertainty about which is the front and which the back.

The descriptive name given to it hints that Suzuki is trying to go beyond the mobile living room idea: this is the Mobile Terrace. Not only can the seats be moved to surround a table that is made from the huge television instrument display, but the floor can be extended through the open doors to form a terrace for this living room on wheels.

What’s it for? Don’t ask. Suzuki’s designers did it because they could.

Mitsubishi has had the same idea, without the balconies, for its smaller Se-Ro (which stands for “secret room”). It is another gawky push-me-pull-you in which the driving controls seem almost irrelevant: the steering wheel folds out of the way as you open the doors and the seats can be rearranged in different ways to form a desk, settee, or storage compartments.

More likely to make it to production is the Honda Imas, which could become the most futuristic car on our roads. The Imas is a 2+2 coupé made in aluminium and carbon fibre using the next generation of Honda’s hybrid Ima (integrated motor assist) power unit.

The armadillo-like shape provides aerodynamic efficiency, while there is an aluminium framework inspired by racing cycles. Like many of the Tokyo show cars, the Imas has thin, transparent and free-standing panels for instrument and navigation displays. This car is tipped to replace the Insight, Honda’s first hybrid model, in 2005.

While many of the cars show an exciting self-confidence in Japanese design, technology and craftsmanship, one car takes it rather too far.

The Nissan Jikoo — built to celebrate the company’s 70th birthday and the 400th anniversary of the founding of Tokyo — incorporates ancient Japanese patterns and craftsmanship, but is a truly ugly thing (and thankfully has no chance of production). The hammered metal wings, ebony floor and lacquer work, as well as the tortoiseshell (actually buffalo horn) steering-wheel rim and deerskin seats are all traditional materials and techniques.

The Jikoo is an electric car based on the Nissan Hypermini and has a unique electronic navigation system, displayed on panels which take up the whole dashboard.

As well as providing maps and guidance for modern Tokyo and graphic displays of routes between skyscrapers, Blade Runner style, it also provides scenes of Tokyo during the city’s Edo period in the 17th century.

Such sentimentality doesn’t seem a likely feature for the car of the future.

AND A FEW FOR THE REAL WORLD

The Tokyo show isn’t just about exaggerated visions of the future. Several exciting sports cars exhibited by Japanese makers will eventually appear in dealer showrooms.

The most exciting is the Honda HSC, a mid-engined two-seater destined to replace the NSX supercar. The HSC is aluminium bodied and has a V6 engine developing more than 300bhp. Expect the production version in 2006. Also attracting attention was the Mazda Ibuki, a study for the MX-5 sports car’s replacement.

Subaru’s B9 Scrambler two-seater has hybrid power, four-wheel drive and air suspension, but the production sports car won’t be so radical. Nissan previewed its C-Note production car, which looks surprisingly like Renault’s Mégane, which is strange, as keeping design separate is important to the Renault-Nissan alliance. However, it will sell only in Asian markets.